United Way of Cascade County helps ready kids for kindergarten success

Stacy Rice | For the Tribune

Each day, Katee Guderjahn gets a Vroom notification on her phone with a fun and simple activity that she and her 4-year-old son, Brady, can do during their 30-minute drive to town.

“We spend a lot of time together on these commutes,” said Guderjahn, an Education Director at Family Connections. “The Vroom app makes the commutes fun and interactive. I appreciate that we are not only strengthening our relationship but also building his brain at the same time.”

During a recent drive, Guderjahn used a Vroom tip about shapes and colors to start a discussion with Brady, and that led to talking about his favorite food – cheeseburgers.

“We often play a silly game where he eats the cars coming toward us,” Guderjahn said. “He combined both games and created a new game where he was going to throw cheese on the next vehicle that came our way and eat it. That led to us talking about the next car coming and how fast he would be throwing the cheese at it.”

Vroom is a free phone app that is helping parents across the nation boost their children’s learning with fast and fun tips. Ready Families Ready Learners, a local partnership among Family Connections, Great Falls Public Schools and Head Start coordinators, has been working to share this smart, user-friendly resource with families and childcare providers to help prepare more children for kindergarten.

As part of the Graduation Matters initiative, United Way six years ago helped launch Ready Families Ready Learners, which provides tools to families to help prepare their children to succeed when they start school. Ready Families Ready Learners organizes a preschool expo every spring and provides school specific guides to every kid entering kindergarten.

GFPS Assistant Superintendent K-6 Ruth Uecker said they’ve seen a need for better kindergarten preparedness during fall school assessments.

“We’ve seen a slow increase in students not ready for the instruction, lacking in some pre-academic skills and language development, and also behavioral things that crop up,” she said. “Some parents don’t know what kindergarten looks like. It’s different than when they were little.”

Uecker said kindergarten readiness is the first step to student success and ultimately graduating.

“If kids are ready to come for instruction and learning, they will be more successful,” she said. “The ultimate goal is for them to graduate from high school with a career or after high school plan.”

But it needs to start in the home at a young age, and that’s where the Vroom app can help.

“Research shows there is an incredible amount of brain development in ages 3 to 5,” said Deb Huestis, Professional Development Specialist Special Projects at Family Connections. “Research also shows that a strong early childhood program sets children up for success. Montana is one of the only states that doesn’t have a publicly funded preschool, and some parents can’t afford preschool.”

But most parents have a phone, and it’s always within reach. With the Vroom app providing ideas, you can teach your children anywhere, anytime throughout the day.

Erin Helms said the app helps when waiting at appointments with her 20-month-old daughter Shay or while in line at the grocery store.

“I love that it gives me ideas for ways to engage with Shay,” Helms said. “I get reminders at 6:30 each morning. I love that I can have a new activity ready to go as soon as she wakes up. She loves them. So many of the activities are more like games and just fit into our daily life.”

The opportunity to transform any situation into a learning opportunity is part of the brilliance of Vroom, and parents already have the tools for the teaching. They just need their phone and the app, which has dozens of ideas for mealtime, bath time, grocery shopping and more.

“We are just letting them know they are the teachers, that they have the knowledge and skills to help prepare them,” Huestis said. “Just talking to your child, asking them to find all the orange fruits at the grocery story, is helping them learn.”

In addition to each activity, Vroom explains what the activity is teaching the child. For instance, asking children to look for colors and shapes while you are driving promotes their curiosity, improves their memory and teaches them to make connections by matching colors and objects.

“I think we’ve gotten into a mindset that education is the school or teacher’s responsibility,” Huestis said. “We need to bring it back to the parents, to remind them they are their children’s first teacher and give them the confidence and brain science behind it.”

Ready Families Ready Learners is one of 34 local programs receiving United Way grants this year. Many people give through an employee campaign, which runs through the end of the year. People also may give by sending contributions directly to United Way at PO Box 1343, Great Falls, MT 59403 or donating online via their secure website at www.uwccmt.org.